City Park Dispensary packs a lot of memorable weed into a very small space

In "Mile Highs and Lows," Westword offers a no-holds-barred look at what goes on behind the locked doors of marijuana clinics, whether they resemble swanky bars, sterile dentist's offices or a dope dealer's college dorm room.

See our dispensary list here, and keep reading for William Breathes's review of City Park Dispensary:

Our take: City Park's wide, expansive lawns and century-old towering trees make for a great place to stretch out and relax. City Park Dispensary, on the other hand, is a tiny, one-room clinic off East Colfax that doesn't have much room for stretching out -- but it has plenty to help you relax. This center is based in a former used-car lot that must have sold very small cars. Sneeze at the wrong time when you're heading along Colfax and you'll miss it -- but at least there's ample free parking (a bonus at all clinics in former car lots). Two steps through the front door and you're standing in the middle of the clean, comfortable dispensary, which somehow contains two massive desks, a tiny waiting area with a few plastic and metal chairs, and two herb bars back in the right corner. If you're looking for a clinic where you can get a massage and sit by a water sculpture reading a magazine, this is not the spot.

Peak 19.

The first time I went in, I was the only person in the dispensary besides the budtender, and he chatted me up about the heat outside while I browsed the selection of hash. City Park didn't have much variety, but what it did have -- a gooey, dark orange hash oil and kief mixture -- looked great.

It also had some outstanding Durban Poison: My eyes probably looked like dinner plates after the 'tender held the jar of minty ganja under my nose. Unfortunately, I only had enough cash for a $30 half-gram of hash-oil goo, so I didn't browse through the rest of the selection, even though it all looked to be of the same good quality. The owner kicked me down a nugget of the Durban anyway and told me to come back the next time I was flower shopping.

The sweet-smelling hash oil-kief mixture had more viscosity than normal hash, and if it sat in your hand long enough, it melted like a piece of milk chocolate. Smearing it on top of a bowl of herb with a toothpick was like buttering a piece of bread. The Durban was extremely well done: Fluffy and coated in orange hairs, it had an amazing fruity taste that was distinguishable all the way down to the end of a spliff.

Wanting to give more of City Park's selection a shot, I headed back to the dispensary a week later. The owner sort of remembered me and quickly got my paperwork sorted out, then stepped over to the bud bar to show me the rest of the herb. The bud is kept in cool, rectangular glass jars that barely squeeze into the eighteen slots, giving the place an apothecary feeling. There are no counters separating you from the budtender; everything is at eye level and very personal. The strains are broken down by price, with $60 strains on top, $55 strains below those and $50 strains on the bottom, along with a jar of $40-per-gram hash oil (all tax included). A microscope on the counter lets you peer at buds close up.

After I gave my preferences for meds, the budtender talked me through several kinds of sativa-heavy strains, but my ADD kicked in after I spotted two names I hadn't seen before: Peak 19 and Endor. Both were top-shelf strains by the shop's standards, so I took home a split eighth to sample.

Endor.

The Endor had a weird, hippie B.O. funk to it at first, with a rich, sweet and woody finish like hickory-flavored barbecue sauce. It smoked thick and instantly gave me heavy eyes and a floating head. Really strong at the start, the buzz relaxed after about a half-hour, and I was left focused and alert. I liked this strain and didn't feel like I had to keep smoking through the day to stay medicated.

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The Peak 19 was candy-like in the sunlight, like lime-green Sour Patch Kids on stems. It had a velvety-sweet smell in the jar, but breaking it open brought out a grandpa's-old-jacket mustiness. Although the tiny buds lacked much of a taste beyond being slightly piney, they made up for that lack in strength. If I eat late at night, I usually wake up with bad cramps in the morning. Unfortunately, I burned a bowl of Peak 19 around midnight and had to fight off the urge to cook up a cheeseburger and eat it with Hasselhoff-like abandon. Instead, I settled on a handful of Wheat Thins and a remarkably memorable Otter Pop.

My second visit was on a four-gram-eighth Tuesday; other "Weekly Specials" listed on the white board included free sucker days and sales on ice cream. The budtender said that Mile High is also instituting a $49 price cap starting in August, and that signing the center up as my caregiver would get me a free quarter each month. The shop is doing a lot to get people through the doors - but let's hope they don't all go through at once. It could get cramped in there.

The Wildflower Seed and William Breathes are the pot pen names of our two alternating medical marijuana dispensary reviewers. Read their bios here.